In the petroleum industry, commercially viable liquid products are produced from a variety of raw materials. These materials must be converted efficiently and with a consistent quality to meet market price and quality requirements. Plastic waste has traditionally been disposed of in a landfill or incinerated for the heat value due to the difficulty in economically sorting polymer types and consistently converting the material into fungible liquid products. Both the landfill and incineration pose environmental disadvantages and a low value and/or high cost solutions for this energy abundant feedstock.
A pyrolysis process is an example of a thermal decomposition process which has shown promise in efficiently converting the plastic waste streams into gases which can then be condensed into liquids for further processing into petroleum products and petrochemical products. Pyrolysis technologies have been unable to convert the full range of plastics in the waste stream which then requires that some level of sorting be performed in preparation of the feedstock, thus reducing the economic viability. In addition, due to changes in the plastic waste stream, many pyrolysis technologies have not been able to produce a consistent end product capable of being upgraded to petroleum products that can consistently meet required industry specifications. Such out of spec products require further processing which consumes great amounts of energy thus further reducing the economic viability.
While there are several methods currently available for generating petroleum products, there are drawbacks to such methods in terms of energy consumption, product yield and quality of the products produced.